Published in Windlesora 05 (1986)
© WLHG
It was in the summer of 1880 that a young lad, barely fourteen, arrived at a Windsor drapers to take up employment as an apprentice. The boy was none other than Herbert George Wells, who was destined for uncommonly greater things, and the establishment was Rodgers and Denyer, situated in the High Street and whose premises are now occupied by the Midland Bank and the Token House, both of which display plaques commemorating Wells’ stay. In the reign of King Edward VII the store, by then known as Denyer and Dyson Ltd, described itself as the leading “silk-mercers, linen drapers, lacemen, court milliners and dressmakers, by appointment to His Majesty the King, Queen Alexandra, Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, Princess Louise and the Royal Family“. The establishment was also one of the first in Windsor to install a telephone, in 1894, as described by Fred Fuzzens in Windlesora 03.
Thus it was a distinguished store to which the young Wells was sent by his mother, Sarah; she considered drapery the highest and most respectable occupation that one from their station in life could attain. She had earlier apprenticed his two brothers to the trade and could see no reason why her young Bertie should not follow in their footsteps. At that time £50 had to be paid by the parents for the “privilege” of apprenticeship, and it was with much hardship that she was able to save the money, since her husband’s income was erratic. Intent though she was on sending her youngest son out into the world, Sarah did not wish Bertie to venture alone, and so he was packed off to Windsor because nearby at Surly Hall, an inn on the Thames two miles along the Maidenhead Road, lived Uncle Tom Pennicott, in reality Sarah’s second cousin.
Uncle Tom had previously kept the Royal Oak (or Royal Oak & Railway Hotel) opposite the station on the Datchet Road and, on the profits made there, bought and rebuilt Surly Hall. With the help of Patrick James Byrne (Architect and Sanitary Inspector to the Rural Sanitary Authority and Architect to the Royal Windsor Tapestry Works), it was redesigned with gables decorated in blue and with mottoes extolling the glories of Eton. The inn was well established in Eton College tradition and it was frequented in the summer by wetbobs (the Eton rowers). It was situated next to the Willows and its name derived, apparently, from the surliness of successive landlords, in particular one from the early nineteenth century named Hall. The Willows was later purchased by the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, who subsequently bought Surly Hall and demolished it to increase the extent of her grounds. The name now survives in Surly Hall Walk, off Tudor Way in Dedworth.
So Bertie arrived at Rodgers & Denyer in Uncle Tom’s dog cart and was taken up to the dormitory via a narrow staircase. The other domestic rooms consisted of a small, dismal sitting-room where one could rest in the evening and a dining-room situated below stairs, lit by gas and containing two long dining tables. Wells described this room at the time as a “sort of vault underground”. In later years, whilst making room for more stock, the Token House’s proprietors came across the old range on which the apprentices’ meals were cooked. When the range was moved, a medieval well was discovered beneath it, and a partly burnt copy of a Rodgers & Denyer receipt book, which would have been so familiar to Wells.
Back to 1880; Bertie’s job was to sit behind the counter, take the money, enter the amount on a cash sheet and stamp the receipts. Additional duties included dusting and window cleaning, which were carried out in the morning after the bell rang to get up at 7.30 a.m. After breakfast he was to prepare his cash sheet at 8.30, ready for the commencement of his counter duties. Dinner was at 1.00 p.m. and work continued until the close of business, when the cash in the till was totalled and agreed to the cash sheet. After tea the shop had to be swept out and the working day ended with supper at 8.30. After a short free period, apprentices were expected to be back on the premises at 10.00, with lights out at 10.30. Sundays were free and there was early closing at 5.00 p.m. one day a week. In a letter written to his mother shortly after taking up employment, Bertie states that he does not like the place and that, tired of being indoors, he had visited Clewer Church that morning (Sunday). He added a p.s. to say that his washing would be 12s. a quarter. However, he was not to last that long.
He did not take to this life and showed no interest in his work. At every opportunity he walked to Surly Hall and was entertained by Uncle Tom’s daughters Kate and Clara who were in their early twenties, whom he already knew having spent summer holidays at the inn. Kate was the more serious of the two and encouraged him to read and to draw. The inn also possessed a complete set of Dickens, which Bertie read in great measure, and a collection, albeit decaying, of stuffed birds, ostrich eggs and the like. In addition he learned to paddle, row and punt, and on one occasion was permitted to punt the actress Ellen Terry, friend of Bernard Shaw, who was staying at the inn to learn a part. Bertie described her as a goddess. While she was there she was visited by the actor Henry Irving who was, incidentally, the first actor to be knighted.
Such memories had a profound effect on Wells. In his “Experiment in Autobiography” written at the age of 68 in 1934, he stated that he could still vividly remember the walk along the Maidenhead Road via Clewer to his Uncle’s and could recall each point where the road widened or narrowed. He tells us that the last stretch from Clewer in the dark held unknown terrors, and once when there was a rumour of an escaped panther, the sound of a horse on the other side of a hedge almost frightened him out of his wits!
After only a couple of months, Bertie was dismissed. His heart was not in his job and he performed his tasks mechanically, if he could not avoid them altogether, and spent as much time as possible in the warehouse reading and learning, smuggling in books and practising algebra. In the meantime his work was becoming slapdash and inaccurate and finally, after constant shortages in the till almost led to an accusation of pilfering, and after a brawl with a porter led to a black eye, he was asked to leave, despite protestations from Uncle Tom. He left to stay briefly at Uppark in Sussex, home of the Fetherstonhaugh family, where his mother was housekeeper. From there he joined his Uncle Williams as a teacher in Wookey, Somerset.
Uncle Williams had married Uncle Tom’s sister. He had earlier invented and then manufactured a school desk with a sunken inkpot and had left the teaching profession at one point to become a partner in a firm in Clewer which dealt with school equipment, including his desk. Unfortunately, he seems to have fallen to clerk in his own firm and then lost even that post. It was then he was offered the teaching job at Wookey, but he left his wife and two daughters in Clewer, where the latter taught in a local school.
Despite his unhappy sojourn, the Windsor area retained its appeal and Wells had an affection for Monkey Island, which was upstream from Surly Hall. He used the inn on the island as a rendezvous with Rebecca West during their notorious affair (she describes the inn in her book “Return of the Soldier”). In 1916, however, Rebecca did not find the place to her liking. It was just a year after the birth of their son Anthony West (whose biography of his father has recently been published) that she wrote to Wells requesting him to join them at the Riviera Hotel, Maidenhead. Apparently, Wells had been moving her and their son from one abode to another around the country, she eventually grew tired of gossiping servants and other inconveniences and removed to this hotel because she felt that Monkey Island was too isolated in her particular circumstances. He wrote back stating his preference for Monkey Island, but to no avail. The riverside at Maidenhead was very popular earlier this century, as it still is, and perhaps this appealed to Rebecca. At all events Wells was attracted to the district and kept up with the social set via Lady Desborough at Taplow Court.
Turning to Well’s fiction, he often used autobiographical details and topography familiar to him in his novels. The below-stairs dining room at Rodgers & Denyer, the servants’ quarters and tunnels he frequented at Uppark and the fact that he was raised in a semi- basement provided Wells with underground locations in his writings, the best-known being the Morlocks caverns in “The Time Machine” (1895). It is interesting to note that these caverns were entered via wells and he would probably have liked the idea that at Rodgers & Denyer there was a well beneath Wells.
Passing on to perhaps his most famous novel “The History of Mr. Polly” (1910), the riverside Potwell Inn at which Polly finally settles is modelled on Surly Hall, where he spent so many happy hours (a “perfect heaven” compared with his drapers’ digs). The book has an escapist theme and it is significant that when Wells thought of escape he recalled this favourite haunt of his childhood.
His work “The Passionate Friends” (1913), a novel concerned with the problems of marriage, describes both Windsor and Eton under the pseudonyms of Wetmore and Harbury, respectively. “Joan and Peter” (1918), a long novel on the subject of education, has one of its principal characters attend a second-rate boarding school in Windsor, from which he runs away at the age of ten. His travels bring him straight away to Clewer and from there he walks along that road so familiar to Wells, past Surly Hall to Maidenhead, Boulters Lock and Cliveden.
In 1922, “The Secret Places of the Heart“, which has as its theme a search for a sexual mores, is interesting for its portrayal of Rebecca West in the character of Martin Leeds, the young mistress of Sir Richmond Hardy, who is Wells thinly disguised. The book is also a kind of travelogue of the south and west of England, which begins with an altercation with a laundry cart near Taplow Station, continues with a row up the river towards Cliveden and includes a stay at the Radiant (Riviera?) Hotel at Maidenhead. There was apparently an outcry at a suggestion in the book that Maidenhead was a rendezvous for illicit love affairs.
The most extraordinary literary reference, however, occurs in “Men Like Gods” (1923), a fictional account of an ideal society set on a parallel Earth in another dimension, and is notable for its caricatures of Winston Churchill and Arthur Balfour. Cecil Burleigh (Balfour), Rupert Catskill (Churchill) and others are travelling by car along the Maidenhead Road from Slough. In sight of Windsor Castle at Taplow, after turning a bend in the road the vehicle and its occupants are transported in a flash into Utopia. Only H.G. Wells could have conceived such a translocation!
Wells wrote over one hundred books and over eighty short stories in addition to pamphlets, journalism and various other literary contributions. However, it is perhaps as author of formative science fiction such as “The Invisible Man” and “The War of the Worlds” and such novels as “Kipps” and “Tono-Bungay” that he is best remembered today. Nevertheless, there is a resurgence of interest in his other works, both fiction and non-fiction, which cover a wide range of subjects. As prophet and visionary he was the author of “A Modern Utopia” and “The Shape of Things to Come“. As educationalist he wrote the million-selling “Outline of History” and, with the help of his son G.P. Wells and Julian Huxley, the biological survey “The Science of Life“. As revolutionary and tireless campaigner for the betterment of mankind, he urged man to adapt to the vast technological changes of the twentieth century and to build a new world in such works as “The Open Conspiracy” and “Phoenix“. In this connection he had audiences with Lenin, Stalin and Roosevelt and was the cardinal architect of the Sankey Declaration of Human Rights of 1940, which in its turn was a major influence in the Declaration adopted by the United Nations in 1948.
1986 marks the 120th. anniversary of Wells’ birth and 40th. of his death, which is to be celebrated with an International Symposium in London to reassess his life and works. It is pleasing to reflect on the influence which the Windsor area had on such a remarkable literary figure of the twentieth century.
Eric L. Fitch
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Windsor Library and the H. G. Wells Society for their assistance.
Windsor Local History Group 